Increasingly, firms establish strategic alliances to gain access to complementary resources and abilities. The competitive paradigm is being replaced by the co-operative one. However, as important as the choice for the perfect partner, is the way that this partnership is managed - governance. In fact, the governance, if well implemented, enables firms in an alliance to work closely without the need for costly formal hierarchical controls - better alliance performance. Besides its importance, the issue - governance - has not been studied in the Brazilian fuel industry. Hence the objective of this study: to examine how wholesalers in this industry manage their alliances with their partners - service stations, analysing the different kinds of governance mechanisms used - social and formal. The investigation involved a survey of the perceptions of the service station dealers as well as interviews with the wholesaler managers. The results suggest that the use of social mechanisms, as a complement to the formal ones, can enhance alliance performance.